Boobs, rags and Judy Blume

BOOBS, RAGS & JUDY BLOOM

‘When will I get my boobs?’

I was eleven years old, and ever since I’d finished Judy Blume’s seminal work, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I was in our kitchen moaning to Mum on a daily basis about my glaring lack of mammary glands (Ms Blume has a lot to answer for).

Mum made no comment, just shifted her weight slightly on her feet and continued standing at the sink with her back to me. I sighed and resolved to return to my bedroom to do some more breast-enhancing exercises. ‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust... ’ I’m not sure how this technique was supposed to work, but I hoped it would – and soon! My gaggle of girls (I had dubbed us ‘The Gang’ so we sounded tougher than we actually were) was due to arrive in a few hours for a weekend get-together at my place and I was still as disappointingly flat as the proverbial surfboard. There were seven of us, and I’d worked hard to make these friends after swapping schools a year earlier, in Grade 6. I watched with envy as they all got their ‘marbles’, which gradually developed into well-formed little breasts. I only had fleabites where two nice little mounds should be.

I would try to fool my mates by popping down the front of my top some dried up balls of ‘Slime in a Bucket’, horrid kids’ gunk sourced from a showbag I got at the local agricultural show in Townsville in Far North Queensland. That got old when my snot-green goo boobs slipped out of place, or worse, fell out and onto the floor. ‘Phoebe’s got fakies!’ screeched the other girls, as I burned with shame.

Cute as my struggles seem in retrospect, my overdue puberty eventually became beyond a joke. One by one, members of The Gang came to school with a certain look in their eyes – an unholy mixture of pride and horror – and announced they had got their ‘rags’. Each time I felt a choking jealousy that made my head fuzzy. It was like the sensation of sand being sucked out from under your feet as waves break on the beach. My ears blocked up. I barely heard my friends as they gushed through the gory details of the arrival of their monthlies.

‘It’s raining down south!’ one would say. ‘Nosebleed in Tasmania,’ another would reply. ‘Clean up in aisle one,’ piped in a third.

Resounding giggles. I moved so I could sit on my hands. ‘How about that new Madonna video clip?’ I would offer weakly, desperate to appear somewhat mature and cool. ‘What do you think she’s on about when she says, “Papa don’t preach”?’ The girls would stop to eye me before going back to listing their top ten euphemisms for menstruation.

For my part, I would resist the urge to flick their trainer bra straps until their backs bled in tandem with their vaginas. But now was not the time for revenge. Rather, I was making a blue-chip investment in my popularity stock, which would soar to an all-time high when I held a rockin’ pre-teen sleepover. This would be our chance to gossip about hot boys and choreograph some new routines to the synthstyles of ’80s pop music like ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ by Cyndi Lauper or, if we were feeling a tad more artistic, something like ‘One Night in Bangkok’ by Murray Head. It was going to be a bonding time for us all, and I sure as heck didn’t want to be on the outer for that. I spent a lot of time making sure it would all go perfectly. My bedroom was looking just right: plastered with teen idol posters of the boys from Pseudo Echo and Wa Wa Nee and the permanent paint murals Mum had allowed us to splatter the walls with as she was ‘going to wallpaper over them as soon as we moved out when we turned seventeen’ anyway. The fridge was cram- packed with drinks and snacks – mini pizzas, party pies and fizzy drinks – and my little sister Bonnie had been banished to one of her own friends’ houses for the afternoon. Everything was set to go. Only Mum seemed out of sorts.

I’m not sure of the precise moment when my mother’s attitude began to change. It might have been when I refused to wear white t-shirts out of the house unless I had a singlet on underneath. Or it might have been the hours I had begun to spend gazing at my own reflection at all angles in the full-length mirror. Maybe it was when I started bringing up awkward subjects such as pregnancy, abortion and birth control. Mum became a little jumpy around me. I couldn’t quite diagnose it, but I could sense her unsettled energy and decided the best course of action would be to steer clear.

Finally, the first cars arrived to drop off my friends. Parents waved farewell to their youngsters behind a plume of Winfield Blue smoke and ash as they sped away down the street, leaving my friends to trudge up our steep driveway. Before long, my bedroom had reached a fever pitch of squeals, shrieking laughter and the other assorted sounds of pubescent lounging and lolligagging. When one gal pal chucked an unused tampon in another’s lap, resulting in an extra shrill scream, Mum poked her head in long enough for me to see her disapproving expression. I pretended not to notice, and she stalked off.. ‘Oh my god, Phoebe, I think your mum doesn’t like us!’ one friend whispered theatrically.

‘Don’t worry about her,’ I said. ‘She’s probably about to get a visit from Aunty Flo.’

Wild hilarity. Pitch and timing perfect. Put them off the hot topic of my own deficit with some on-topic humour. Excellent decoy. ‘So...’ ventured another friend, ‘has George come to visit you yet, Phoebe?’ Damn! ‘Er, no, not yet.’ Loaded pause. The girls looked at one another. One broke the silence.

‘You’re nearly twelve, Phoebe. Maybe something’s . . . wrong?’ ‘Yeah, maybe you should ask your mother about it?’ someone added.

A general mumble of agreement. ‘You think?’ I said, looking up from my lap at all six faces through my fringe. I’d been avoiding the subject with my mother. ‘Sure. That’s what we’d do.’

All nodded earnestly, wide doe-eyes. I straightened my back and injected some bravado into my voice. ‘Alright then, I’ll ask her right now.’ A sudden burst of energy and everyone got up as a chattering whole to leave the room together. ‘Maybe you guys should stay here.’ My suggestion was met with poutiness and smirks. I turned away from the tittering tits and went searching for Mum. I discovered her in the backyard, watering the plants. She saw me sidling towards her and angled slightly away, aiming her nozzle at a despondent soursop sapling. ‘Um, Mum,’ I said sheepishly. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Mum flicked her eyes at me. Muffled laughter came from the back window and I turned to see The Gang all peering through to eavesdrop on the exchange. Mum looked up and saw them too. She rolled her eyes and pivoted, yanking the hose towards a remote corner of the yard. I shooed the girls and waited until they’d reluctantly moved away. Hearing them retreat back to the bedroom, I approached Mum again with trepidation. A few metres from where she was standing, facing the garden, I stopped and waited for her to acknowledge me. ‘What is it, Phoebe?’ she said exasperatedly. I swallowed and went for it.

‘Umm. Everyone’s been asking me, and I was wondering . . . when will I get my periods?’

Mum stiffened and half-turned towards me.

I’m not sure why I phrased my question in this particular way. I expected her perhaps to simply say ‘Soon’ or ‘Be patient, it will happen in time’, and that would be the end of the conversation. Funny things, expectations. Mum sighed. ‘Phoebe, you’ll never get your periods.’

I stood blinking in the afternoon light, stunned. My lips formed a basic monosyllabic response. ‘Why?’ Mum’s mouth tightened.

‘Because... you don’t have a uterus. So you can’t have periods, and you can’t have a baby.’

My head began eddying with thick, dark thoughts. The inner part of me was screaming Whaaaaatt!?! but the outer part was completely blank, speechless. ‘You can adopt, though, if you like,’ Mum added. A beat. ‘Really? Are you... sure?’ I said eventually. ‘No periods?’ ‘Okay then... at least I’ve got something I can tell the others. They’ve all been asking why I haven’t got my period yet.’ For the first time, Mum whipped around and faced me, eye to eye. ‘Don’t you tell them anything!’ My eyes must have popped out of my head. Mum calmed herself a little before proceeding. ‘It’s not a good idea to tell anyone about this. Your father and I haven’t told anyone else, not even Grandma and Granddad.

So let’s keep this a secret. Our secret. Okay?’ Her words snapped me out of fogginess into a clear, tangible focus and I sensed blood pounding in my temples. I had a secret. A really, REALLY big secret. I couldn’t believe even my beloved grandma wasn’t allowed to know. ‘Is that everything?’ Mum was looking at me. I got the feeling she didn’t want me to ask another question. I stood there for a moment longer, before turning around quietly and re-entering the house. My memory of what happened next or what I said is murky. I suspect that, in a trancelike state, I nodded, left Mum to her garden and stumbled back to the bedroom with its air of breathless anticipation. I imagine that The Gang was dying to know what had happened – some- thing, anything! – but I can’t remember what I told them. Most likely, ‘It’s nothing.’ But it was something. In the end, my breasts did start to emerge, little by little. But by then I had assigned myself apart from the girls and their feminine ways. There was nothing in any Judy Blume book that could explain this to me, and no one to ask ‘why’? It would be ages before I understood the reason – many years before I learnt that I am intersex and that my sex chromosomes and organs are male. All I knew was I was different. Very different. It was a profound feeling that shaped my adolescence and my life for a long time to come. Looking back, I have mixed emotions about this time. It was the start of my journey towards understanding my body and myself more, although it was rough and things didn’t get much better any time soon. I still struggle sometimes to accept I’ll never be normal, whatever the hell ‘normal’ means. In these times, I feel confused and lonely, much like the eleven-year-old me. But as my knowledge of human experience has expanded, I’ve come to realise I’m not alone in feeling this complicated mélange of shame, loss, discovery and, finally, pride. And now I know I am accepted for exactly who I am. By Phoebe Hart. This is an edited extract from Growing up in Australia, Published by Black Inc. RRP $29.99.

Growing Up in Australia also features gems from essential Australian memoirs such as Rick Morton’s One Hundred Years of Dirt and Magda Szubanski’s Reckoning. Contributors include Tim Winton, Benjamin Law, Anna Goldsworthy, Nyadol Nyuon, Tara June Winch, Miranda Tapsell, Carly Findlay and many more. With a foreword by Alice Pung, this anthology is a wonderful gift for adult and adolescent readers alike.

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